On-Road Fuels

The Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) provides fuel price or cost and emissions for select on-road vehicle fuels, including gasoline and ethanol, diesel fuel, natural gas, electricity, and hydrogen.

Finished fuel prices are meant to represent retail prices, and they include estimated taxes (for fuels that are currently taxed) and distribution costs. Blendstock data do not include taxes or distribution costs. 

We use the U.S. Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook 2021 for current and projected petroleum fuel prices. Projected fuel prices are associated with particular years; however, because ATB does not provide a time-series trajectory, we present fuel price at a frozen level for all years, offering different scenarios for a range of fuel price values.

Fuel Scenarios

For non-petroleum fuels, the Transportation ATB presents five fuel scenarios, which include current market, current modeled, or future modeled conditions at low or high production volume scales, based on techno-economic modeling of potential technology advancement. 

• The Current Market scenario represents fuel price and emissions data for fuels that are commercially available, with the exact source, timing, averaging, and other details described in the references. Current Market fuel prices are primarily based on the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Fuel price may differ from retail prices because of market volatility and local market conditions. Fuel emissions data are primarily from the GREET model. See specific notes on each fuel page and references for specific dates and averaging methods.
• The Current Modeled, Current Volume scenario reflects fuel metrics based on techno-economic modeling of the current technology at current market production volume as specified in the notes and references.
• The Current Modeled, High Volume scenario estimates fuel metrics based on based on techno-economic modeling of the current technology at high market production volume. Timing of this scenario depends on when high production volume is achieved.
• The Future Modeled, Low Volume scenario represents fuel metrics based on a future technological state modeled at low market production volume, as might be the case for a pioneer plant.
• The Future Modeled, High Volume scenario represents fuel metrics based on a future technological state, modeled at high market production volume, often called "n^th plant." Timing of this scenario depends on when high production volume is achieved.

Fuels data are used in the Levelized Cost of Driving charts on the vehicle pages in the Transportation ATB. For each scenario, single-point estimates of costs—rather than a full time-series trajectory—are presented. In the levelized cost of driving and emissions charts, this approach clearly distinguishes the trajectory of fuels from that of vehicle technologies because fuel prices and emissions remain constant while vehicle technologies change over time.

The full set of vehicle and fuel data can be downloaded and explored.